@ John B Mint

I have been on a mission to make bitcoin physical longer than I would like to admit. And I’m not talking about physical key cards or flash drives that hackers can exploit and governments can censor. I’m talking about incarnating the unit of account into physical material—a sort of cypherpunk alchemy. This obsession took root when I realized how close we are to the cashless and contactless society so many science fiction writers and futurists warned us about. At first, I thought this transition was just a given force of nature emerging from the evolution of free markets—one efficient innovation solving the inefficiency of another. However, as a digital assets journalist, I quickly discovered that financial privacy wasn’t only not an option in this more efficient system. Its public and traceable transparency was a feature that state actors would do anything to preserve. I learned that if I wanted to protect my freedom to cooperate with who and how I like, I would need to find a way to cash bitcoin, the oldest and most trustworthy digital asset, out of this surveillance matrix and into physical instantiations that are independently verifiable. Well, I discovered the secret to making this a reality. And I published an unalterable and uncensorable public record of it onto its blockchain. The bitcoin you see attached to this paper was minted using this standard. But before I explain the “how” and the, “why bitcoin?” I want to explain why cash is on its last dying breath and how states will use Bitcoin to usher in a new phase of the contactless matrix we are already living in. *You can find copies of this guide with physical bitcoin at local bookstores around LA.* ## THE CONTACTLESS NETWORK STATE Ask yourself this question. When did you last connect, in a meaningful way, with the other human being behind a transaction? I find that on the rare occasion there is a human to interact with in an exchange, it lacks eye contact or any sense of goodwill—an experience I'm afraid to admit happens on both sides of the counter. While I'm fully aware that my patience for interacting with strangers has reached a catastrophic low, I get the sense that I am not alone. I see it in the unwillingness to return those small courtesies that once saturated our society. You see, I am young enough to know and feel the social effects of growing up in a chronically online culture and old enough to remember a time when "thank you for your business" meant more than an adjustment to an electronic ledger. The exchange of tendered goods and services, if you recall, used to establish a relationship of mutual respect. Each transaction had body language and a face that other human beings could recognize, appreciate and hold accountable. Over the past few decades, we have systematically stripped those familiar human elements from commerce and deferred our responsibilities of recognition and accountability to a matrix of automated protocols and machines. I believe that this proliferation of intermediation is giving us early-onset dementia. It has removed the critical brain gym exercises that keep a body politic capable of trusting, engaging and holding other community members accountable. Each physical cash exchange may not feel significant, but it has a virtuous multiplying effect. On the rare occasions when we carry it, we are more willing to give it to someone in need. For example, cash is more likely to find its way to "The Young Entrepreneur's" bake sale outside Whole Foods than the grocery store's Amazon-owned bank account. Think about all the times a stranger asked you for money and you said, “sorry, I don’t have any cash on me.” Any cash you do have in your pocket doesn’t stay there for long. It passes from one human hand to another that owns a local business, is an independent contractor or simply in need. And yes, some use it for illicit activity, but that damage to society is an ounce in the bucket compared to the mass inequality and social erosion that hundreds of trillions in printed digital credit causes. At first glance, this observation makes it appear that cash is a moral good. But that's not what I'm suggesting. The difference is not between the quality of cash and digital cash. It is in the scope of intermediation between each exchange. Digital money may feel frictionless, but it contains the weight, energy and computing potential of this vast global network in between every transaction. Cash transactions, on the other hand, do not rely on any other machine to validate and execute a command. Instead, it only requires the mutual recognition of value and goodwill of both parties to maintain the cooperative relationship. The intermediating obfuscation of the human element is what slowly erodes our innate instinct to cooperate. And the human is what's at risk the more machine we insert into every human interaction. This slow march away from human trust not only removes the opportunities to give and reinvest cash into our communities, it makes us less generous towards and uninterested in the people closest to us. Instead, the same network of machines mediating our transactions harvests our attention by connecting us to people and content that affirm our views and boost our reach. Think about it. How many purchases from the past month were made because an algorithm suggested them to you while simultaneously connecting you to the content and people that best serve your interests? This experience is not only putting sales associates out of business; it is making them a literal deterrence from shopping in person. Customer surveys have shown that a simple question like, “can I help you with anything?” feels “pushy” and is an unwanted social interaction. Whether we see it or not, this reality is a matrix that disconnects us from the world. It makes conversations with people outside our narrow interests unbearable, creating divisions between the relationships that once meant most to us. This matrix also infects the way we see and engage nature. For example, a beautiful sunset ceases to be a sacred moment of reverence and awe when we view it through the anticipation of how it is received and compared to the other moments online. You don't need to take a picture of the sunset to feel this effect. You only need some presence on the network to shape how you perceive the moment. If you don’t believe me, I recommend reading “The Extinction of Experience” by Christine Rosen. She masterfully explains the total impact that these intermediating forces have on society. But the point I wish to make here is that the transition away from cash, amidst this societal shift, is giving up more agency and mutual good than we realize. But more pressingly, it gives up the public's only bargaining chip with the banking casino network. You see, even if you don't use cash, your ability to withdraw it from their accounting system puts an elastic check on money debasement. For example, banks are less inclined to infinitely leverage your deposits if they know you can take them out of their surveillance and credit-tracking network. Anyone within living memory of the 2008 financial crisis knows that the banking elite’s appetite for exploitation and control has no limit. If there is an opportunity for more, they will always take it. ## THE WAR AGAINST PHYSICAL MONEY This growing matrix isn’t simply conditioning us to use cash less and less. Those "no cash" signs you see at more and more coffee shops are just the tip of a well-constructed mechanical spear aimed squarely at the human-to-human exchange. For example, over the past 5 years, banks have doubled business cash deposit fees and increased all other costs associated with running a cash-heavy operation—making it more expensive than digital payment solutions. That coordinated effort, along with the help and political influence of organizations like The World Health Organization and Better Than Cash Alliance, has made refusing cash not only socially acceptable and financially expedient but they have made it a virtue of "sustainable development." This rebranding and the cachet businesses earned for requiring contactless payments during COVID-19 gave them the cover needed to continue the practice today. As a result, the number of companies no longer accepting cash is at an unprecedented all-time high of 40%. This effect is not the result of a secret cabal. It is what the techno-optimists hail as the grand "network effect." It is the culmination of incentives that orient banking, government and UN-backed systems toward increasing automation and intermediation. As I pen this essay, Congress is discussing a stablecoin bill that would allow the executive branch to eliminate cash altogether. The bill in its current draft enables the infrastructural changes needed for a cashless upheaval because it introduces a novel interbank accounting trick. It would let banks fund their operations with self-issued stablecoins backed with deposits at partner banks. The bill itself doesn't explicitly sanction this practice, but it does create exploitable loopholes to its effect. In short, it enables the same type of hidden leverage and circular financing that fueled the 2008 mortgage-backed security crisis, and it creates a regulated substitute that they can use to replace cash. If the bill passes, we are only one more financial crisis and emergency powers directive away from all banks closing their cash ATMs in turn for their freshly minted, surveillable and programmable stablecoins. ## THE CASHLESS CONTINGENCY PLAN With the looming US debt crisis, the timing of this bill suggests that this might be the work of a contingency plan for when the US government no longer has the political will to service its debt. You see, the Treasury and Congress are between a rock and a hard place. The cost to service the government's debt just surpassed the defense budget. And it will soon overtake and compete with Social Security and Medicare. Congress must either make room for the debt by making severe cuts to the budget or issue new debt to pay the old. The latter option is getting more difficult because the Federal Reserve needs to keep the cost of issuing debt high to curb inflation. And the economy and political will doesn't seem strong enough to make the necessary cuts for the debt payments. The only other option is refinancing the debt with key creditors like China and Russia. In this scenario, the US would face a different existential crisis. Because the interest that one receives for holding US debt is the only reason the world is interested in holding its Dollar. There is nothing else backing US currency. So, if the government renegotiates its debt, it would need a system to ensure and secure interest in the US Dollar. Historically, governments have fixed a currency exchange rate for gold and/or silver to secure this interest in their currency domestically and abroad. However, these metals' physical portability and untraceability make anticipating and regulating redemption difficult. For example, the type of gold liquidity crunches that plagued the late 19th century and early 20th crippled the US banking system and subjected the economy to prolonged and difficult depressions. This is why, amid the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order to confiscate the public's gold. To avoid losing its monetary power and flexibility, the US government will discover that it needs to secure its debt with a digital asset it doesn't directly control but can instantaneously monitor and mark individual units with approval or disapproval. And they will need a digital dollar that its citizens can’t take out of their surveillance state. This level of oversight would give them the ability to not only set an exchange rate that can price the new asset at a level that can adequately service their debt, but it also gives them the ability to set a punitive exchange rate for units of the reserve digital asset not redeemed at approved custodians. This carrot and stick incentive structure would provide the global dollar debt market insurance against the type of liquidity problems it faced when it was backed by gold and issued as physical Federal Reserve Notes. Bitcoin is the only digital asset that the regulating powers can use to support this new monetary standard and system of control. First, it is the one asset secured on a universal public ledger with the longest record of distributed consensus value. Second, its public accounting record allows central authorities to track and devalue coins used for things or ways that don’t serve their interests. This asset’s transparency and historic primacy among all other digital coins make it an unbeatable state reserve asset. And so any currency not priced against it will eventually give way to a standard that is. This simple fundamental reality is undoubtedly why a bill to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve is currently in Congress. The plan to hold bitcoin now can very well provide the precedent to reprice the dollar to a fixed exchange with bitcoin when the time comes. And the US isn’t the only one. Nation-states around the world are facing the same debt problems. These countries are racing to accumulate Bitcoin to their reserve now because they likely suspect others will need to reprice their currencies against it. El Salvador and Butan were the first to announce their reserves. But others like Brazil, Russia and Germany all have indicated that they are moving toward that direction. A transition to such a standard will enrich many people holding bitcoin today. And it may avoid a prolonged global economic depression. But the trade-off will come at a grave cost. It will not only eliminate cash. It will further funnel the remaining energy reserved for in-person cooperation to this machine and the digital world in which it proliferates. And its expansion of power will make us more subject to coercion by exclusion. For example, suppose your credit to society is constantly monitored and validated by this Bitcoin-based matrix. In that case, your behavior is implicitly subject to its interests. Its most potent intelligence-gathering center will exercise this power by setting exclusionary restrictions on those less creditworthy and privileges to those who are more. These credit lines already exist and have, for a long time, created artificial boundaries between people, places, and things. But if we trade more and more of our lived experience for a system that can automate the enforcement of these lines, they will spread like the numbing venom of a parasite, transforming humanity into an empty host. We will exist as a means to something else’s end. Not someone else’s end, but a thing, an immaterial system of things bound by the predetermined objectives of a ghost. Many people who follow this industry are well aware of this threat. But the only response they can give is that tech billionaires like David Sachs, Howard Lutnick, Peter Theil, and Elon Musk are spearheading this initiative, and it seems they have good intentions. If you want a well-rounded and good-faith argument for this perspective, listen to Adam Curry's explanation of the Stablecoin bill on the Joe Rogan Podcast. Personally, I find the “trust me bro” argument unconvincing. And then if you want a deep dive investigation into the motives behind these tech entrepreneurs, I recommend Whitney Webb’s reporting. The technocratic aims of these figure heads are well documented. ## THE BITCOIN MINT At this point, it is hard to imagine cash surviving past the next four years, let alone a decade. The cashless society of a digital matrix feels unavoidable. And honestly, the current state of online culture, with its personality cults, clout chasers, and reactionary communities, does not make this new digital age appear that golden. Plenty of articles and documentaries attempt to warn the world of this growing separation. But these warnings, while alarming, fail to compel actual change. The small remnant of stubborn anarchists and luddites can't return society to material reality. Instead, these artists and commentators unwittingly feed the machine more attention by creating a market for techno-alarmist content. This market creates more financial and social capital incentives that pull collaborative energy away from other humans in the here and now. This irony doesn't discredit their points or invalidate their work. But speaking from experience, the irony is hard to swallow. At first glance, it seems that we can't exit the system without isolating ourselves from society, and we can't try to convince others to leave the system without strengthening it. This social predicament is like a Chinese finger trap. The harder you rage against it, the stronger it gets. So intuitively, the only way out is through. The Bitcoin Mint is how you and I can cash the value of our work in and out of this system. And it's a way we can speak to broader society without feeding the machine our attention. Here's how it works. At face value, it is a set of procedures that offer the Bitcoin Network a way to concede that bitcoin sent to addresses derived from one-of-a-kind physical material is irreversibly minted into those objects. When I first discovered this possibility, a friend asked me a question you are probably asking now. He could foresee how a genuinely one-of-a-kind object could correspond to frozen individual units of bitcoin, but he wanted to know how such a procedure could import bitcoin into physical material. It's a great question. However, it presupposes that bitcoin exists as an identifiable thing in digital space. This is not the case, and it is a common misconception. Bitcoin is accounted for on a shared ledger in digital space, but it does not exist there, just as gold doesn't exist in the markings recorded on a balance sheet. That might throw you. So, let me give you a quick refresher on the Bitcoin basics. Bitcoin's ledger isn’t the complex accounting system most assume it is. The ledger is only composed of three columns. The middle column accounts for the total supply of bitcoin, the far left denotes the location of each base unit of bitcoin, and the far right shows the record of change. This ledger has some rules and guidelines for making changes to this ledger that can get pretty technical, but conceptually, it doesn't get more complicated than those three columns. Nowhere in that ledger or set of mutually held rules is there anything that actually defines the bitcoin recorded in the middle column or limits it to what it can and cannot become. It only limits the supply to 21 million bitcoins, with each bitcoin consisting of 100 million base units. The question, therefore, is not, how do you import bitcoin into physical material? It is; how do you ascribe a definition to the unit recorded to its middle column? And where on its ledger can you record that definition? This question sent me down a curious thought experiment in a park in West Hollywood. You can't universally ascribe a definition at the top of the ledger because there is no way to ensure that each address owner will concede to abstract principles about the nature of the asset. And secondly, if the network could put forth a vote, there would be no way to prevent a vote to change it in the future. The question about its definition is why every attempt to explain "what it is" is never the same. Some argue that it is the energy it costs to acquire, hash rate, computing power, digital property, currency, etc. No matter how adamant someone is, the answer is never consistent. The only other option is to define bitcoin, one base unit at a time. But then the question becomes, where and how do you ascribe that definition to the ledger? At first, I thought one could theoretically ascribe that definition to the right side—the one dedicated to the record of change. This record includes every detail associated with a transaction. But it also has a memo line for extra data. The ledger's consensus rules only limit the size of the data. So the contents can be anything we want. Many use this space to catalog things like article headlines, digital images and entire coding libraries. I initially thought that I could ascribe the definition to individual units of bitcoin by attaching a photo and message claiming that the bitcoin included in its transaction is defined by the material in the image. But this definition doesn't hold true if the bitcoin in question can move to another destination address that isn't associated with that image. I realized that this type of actualization required sacrifice. It needed to sacrifice the potential for the accounted bitcoin to be anything other than this one thing in material reality. This definition would not only need to prove that its bitcoin could never change destination addresses again. It would need to prove that the anchoring destination address was not a random string of numbers in abstracted digital space but, in fact, a verifiable expression of that object. Otherwise, that ambiguity would sever the connection between the bitcoin unit's unique expression in time and space with its ascribed location. It would be like saying my body is sitting in a 1990 Toyota Pickup, but my soul is elsewhere. The procedural minting standard for The Bitcoin Mint meets this requirement. First, this standard is recorded on the right column of the bitcoin ledger under Satoshi Number: 1632665171305931. So anyone can reference it, and no one can alter it. Second, it offers free image detection software to create final destination bitcoin addresses derived from natural visual patterns. The public inscription of this software demonstrates, to those with a basic understanding of cryptography, that no one can ever send that bitcoin to another address. (For crypto nerds: The script proves this because it does not use public-private key pairs when creating the addresses.) Those who wish to mint bitcoin into physical material must find a natural object with a unique, one-of-a-kind pattern and upload an image of it to the software. Then, they need to send bitcoin to the address created from the object. This transaction, with reference to The Bitcoin Mint, will forever ascribe this definition to the ledger's left column, proving to anyone who can see the physical material that the amount of bitcoin in question can only ever be the object from which its address was derived. This minting standard transforms every single unit of bitcoin into little bits of a giant blank canvas. Every artistic contribution to that canvas is independently verifiable—meaning you don’t need an issuer or third party to authenticate it on your behalf. To verify first, visually inspect that its natural irreproducible pattern matches "The Natural Standard" (the image used to generate the address). Second, run the Natural Standard image through "The Minting Standard" protocol to verify it generates the same result. This proves that there was no way to authenticate an outgoing transaction from the address and that the address was deterministically derived from the object in question. Lastly, verify that the bitcoin minted to the object is accounted for at the same address on the network. This step verifies that bitcoin was actually minted to the object and it tells you how much it is worth. I call this last verification step the "The Money Standard" because it ascribes something universal to all money; a way to measure its applied value. ## WHAT NOW Now, you are probably thinking, "the coffee shop down the street refusing to take cash will certainly refuse physical bitcoin. What does this solve?" And it's a good point. The simple existence of physical bitcoin won't change society or reverse this slow march into the digital matrix. But I didn't publish The Bitcoin Mint with this over-inflated notion that it will or must change the world. I published it because I wanted a way for my community to cash in and out when we want and how we want. I did it because, even though cash exists now, it probably won't soon. And I did it to make art that can redirect attention from the matrix toward the here and now. The Bitcoin Mint doesn't need convincing or grand adoption to work. It is simply an inscription that shows you something. It unveils the garment of indescribability cloaked around Bitcoin's base units. What we do with that revelation is up for debate. You can use it to make bitcoin a canvas for your physical art. You can use it to hold and exchange bitcoin privately. You can even oppose this revelation with a religious devotion similar to the iconoclasts of old. That discussion and debate is the most exciting element of this project. Because I alone can't tell you what to do with it. I can only show you my works. And you can only show me yours. This discovery invites a dialectic discourse of creativity and cooperation that demands to be seen in the here and now. My work in all of this is to preserve the tension between organic cooperation and competition. Anarchists like Peter Kropotkin described this tension as mutual aid. It's the force that underpins and sharpens the collective efforts of every economic model throughout history. Automating that dialectic only weakens our resolve and makes us more pliable to the system mediating it. And it's why making bitcoin physical isn’t my end goal. Because at the end of the day, while rudimentary as it is, physical bitcoin is still a mediating tool. We can easily make it a slip of credit that affirms our self-individuality over a gift that can affirm the works of one another. It's why I made the distinguishing mark on my physical bitcoin a hand of aid. I want this revelation to remind people of their innate instinct to cooperate. ## EXCHANGING IDEAS So, in that vein, I'm hosting a regular in-person meet-up for this conversation, debate and art exchange. It's not a podcast or substack. It's just a handful of creatives and critics wanting to learn more about bitcoin, credit, mutual aid and true anarchy. The plan is to publish this guide with the in-person feedback from this meet-up to The Bitcoin Mint Press—a nested catalog within The Bitcoin Mint. This meet-up and publishing system has the potential to branch off into other publishing and distribution hubs. But for now, it's a single hangout in space and time. (You can find more details about this in the link tree.) You might ask, if the goal is to cultivate local cooperation and exchange, then why bother publishing anything at all? We forget that a publisher's work wasn't always an attempt to exploit your attention for personal gain. Publishing is also a way to preserve a consensus of ideas, facts and values. Cataloging this consensus in a public manner helps communities remember their past. It extends that in-person dialectic into the future so that distant communities can build on and refute the claims that came before. Unlike flashy self-publishing platforms like Twitter and Facebook, The Bitcoin Mint Press doesn't host or need a platform to deliver a frictionless user experience. It doesn't beg strangers to feed it their interests and desires. Yet its immutable inscription to the Bitcoin ledger ensures that no one can censor it from the public’s eye. ## EXCHANGING AID AND ART Lastly, this meet-up offers more than just conversation. It allows people to exchange physical bitcoin for aid and allows creatives to share their artistic expressions of bitcoin. These expressions are like those augmented reality QR codes you see at modern art exhibits. But instead of transporting your attention toward art transposed through digital space, they transport it to the material world. This signpost, or physical bitcoin receipt if you will, signals two things to people whose focus and presence occupy digital space. First, it signals you must leave digital space to see and experience the art. Second, it signals that you can actualize your bitcoin into new and creative expressions of art. Now, you might be thinking, “How does physical bitcoin art differ from posting pictures of physical art on social media?” The key difference is the message and verifiability. When you post a picture of physical art, you say, "Look at what I created or discovered." You give the network a digital substitute for the real thing so people don't have to spend the energy to see the art themselves. It doesn't matter if the image is fake or if you were there because you are giving them the experience in and of the post. A physical bitcoin receipt doesn't deliver a substitute for the real thing. It invites you to experience the art in person. It's more like a classifieds posting in the newspaper. Only the posting is permanent and independently verifiable. This public permanence allows artists to ascribe provenance and create dynamic art collections by including additional data in the minting transaction. This information, like the minting standard itself, can be recorded on the right side of the ledger—next to its corresponding transaction. There are quick and easy ways to embed this information. Simply look up "how to inscribe Ordinal collections," and you will find creative ways to string physical mints together under your authorship. Of course, there are still ways for people to exploit this standard to funnel attention back to the machine. But as an anarchist, I'm not here to tell people what they shouldn't do with The Bitcoin Mint. I'm only here to offer an alternative approach. But if you are interested in subverting the technocratic system pervading our day-to-day, consider adopting a simple ethic. Don't engage the matrix with fear or avoidance. Instead, approach it with courage and intention. Look for opportunities to post, coordinate physical cooperation and ghost. And if you are an artist who wants to adopt these principles, consider using the posting (see linkt.ree) for this guide as a template: \[{Share inscription} {opportunity for in-person collab or exchange} {#thebitcoinmint(location)}\]. This standard shows the Luddites and anarchists of the world a way to engage people within the machine on their terms—a way that doesn't feed its digital attention-harvesting objectives. Every inscription attracts local cooperation and local experience, and every local interaction it facilitates inspires more expressions of physical bitcoin art and exchange. But this propensity for growth doesn't mean that the standard needs a network effect to work. It only requires the person before you to see its unalterable ascribed definition on Bitcoin's public ledger. The physical bitcoin attached to the physical editions of guide is part of a social experiment in mutual aid and self-determination. But I won't mince my words here. Your personal agency and orientation to the physical world is an affront to the machine. It and the people most committed to its network objectives will look for ways to stop you, pull you back in and restrain you. But you don’t need their or anyone’s permission to be free. You only need to remember the power and gift of agency this life has given you. See the Link Tree Directory below for information and updates on the local Bitcoin Mint meet-up. And if you don't live close, share this guide and create your own space for mutual aid. Feel free to contact me directly if you have questions or want paper copies with physical bitcoin attached. [Link Tree Directory](https://linktr.ee/TheBitcoinMint) #TheLosAngelesBitcoinMint #TheBitcoinMint